Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

While I do recommend reading the book, it written asa research paper. Opening, point by point proof, then conclusion. If you need the Cliff Notes version, read chapter 8, then apply materials to your studies.However, still read the book. It gives more details, reasons, and explainations.

It’s very useful, lessons that never gets old. The fact that true book is written applying the content is mind blowing

Make It Stick is a great book. It is a must read for everyone whether you recently graduated high school or am embarking on pursuing higher education later in life. As a graduate student myself, I struggled with bad study habits and sought guidance from my school's counseling and education department as to how to fix those bad study habits. Unfortunately, they weren't able to give me any resources that were helpful enough for me to continue with school without running into problems.After reading another book (Deep Work by Cal Newport) that emphasized that if a person wants to be successful in the economy of tomorrow they must be able to produce at an elite level (in terms of quality and speed) and quickly master hard things, I tried to answer the question "What is the best way to lean?" After all, the Newport emphasized that if you can't learn you can't produce and if you can't produce you can't thrive. So the question still remains. What is the best way to learn? That's when I found Make It Stick.Make It Stick emphasizes psychology based studies that have shown to be effective in learning. While I have discussed the contents of this book with a non-tenured professor in biology at my local university who claims that most of the material in Make It Stick is still theoretical, I have found that that professor hasn't a leg to stand on. One fine point Make It Stick mentions (with an empirical study to back it up) is that "when it comes to learning, what we choose to do is guided by our judgments of what works and what doesn't, and we are easily misled (Brown et al, 2014)." That point is reiterated in a TEDx Talk ([...]) about the myth of learning styles (which is also talked about in the Make It Stick). We must question learning strategies (like learning styles) that are widely accepted when there is no empirical evidence to suggest that they work and embrace those that do. We must humble ourselves and embrace the notion that our incompetence may be causing us to overestimate our own competence (Dunning-Kruger effect also discussed in Make It Stick) or else we will suffer the consequences when we feel we are not being taught they way we should be taught (one of the big arguments for learning styles) and we simply stop trying because of that.Make It Stick will challenge you. Effective learning strategies are difficult, slow, and tedious, but they are far more effective than any widely held strategies and approaches. If you were taught to re-read your notes and book, have a bad habit of cramming a couple nights before the big test, or simply believe you have an excellent photographic memory (for which there is no scientific evidence for) then Make It Stick will set you straight.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.AeschylusPrometheus BoundReading the first sentence in the preface of Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel made me roll my eyes:People generally are going about learning in the wrong ways.I’m familiar with the most efficient ways to learn. What can be new under the learning sun?Well, as I started to read, I quickly stopped the eye-rolling and grabbed a pencil to write down all the practical new ideas and extensions on tried-and-true practices gleaned from this book:You learn more by testing yourself than rereadingThe authors emphasize that asking yourself questions and/or being asked questions during the learning cycle and at regular intervals afterwards does more to embed new information deeply into your brain than anything else, including rereading. Students are encouraged to, “Read a little bit and test yourself” while teachers are encouraged to give students regular low-stakes quizzes with clear ground rules, such as “Students can drop 4 quizzes, no make-ups, no exceptions.”A teacher in the book runs “testing groups” rather than “study groups” with the emphasis on closed books and the discussion and exploration of questions and ideas.I love the example where the teacher asks the group a question and records their answers on a whiteboard. (Students are encouraged to answer from memory, not notes.) The teacher asks students which of three answers they think is correct by a show of fingers. Then, the teacher asks each student to find someone with “a different number of fingers,” and talk it out.QuickWrites PlusThe book details a teacher who asks students to write everything you remember for ten minutes at the end of class. What I like is that the teacher has all the students go back and look at the notes to see what information the student did NOT remember and come into the next class cognizant of the weak areas. This metacognitive twist is powerful and this quickwrite plus activity would help students figure out not only what they do now but what they don’t know.Three other ideas gleaned from the reading area) regular sketchnotes to show learning visuallyb) “learning paragraphs” where students get the opportunity to respond to test questions well in advance of the actual test.c) Answers to test questions are keyed to Bloom’s taxonomy levels and students are handed that sheet and their test and asked to determine what level their answers reflect.Read this book if you would like to refresh your approach to teaching and learning while striving for your students to replace “the illusion of knowing” with wisdom.